The other day I rang a public library and asked if they had any files on a man called William Black. “Would that be William Haitch Black?” the librarian asked after due investigation. It might, and it might not, I was tempted to say; certainly he himself would have preferred William Aitch. But that would have been insufferably pedantic; so I meekly agreed. Later, on a train down from Scotland, the restaurant car, we kept being told, was located in “Carriage Haitch”. And my granddaughter tells me that when she used “aitch” at school, one of her teachers insisted that the right way to say it was “haitch”.

The comments on the article are interesting too. I must confess I’d rather hear nails scraping along a blackboard than the pronunciation haitch. Is there a similar trend in the States?

I must confess I’d rather hear nails scraping along a blackboard than the pronunciation haitch. Is there a similar trend in the States?

No, and possibly for that reason it sounds to me charming rather than grating. Also, it makes sense, since it begins with the sound the letter names, a feature that is notably absent from the standard term. I may start using it myself.

You’ve probably heard that in the bad old days in Northern Ireland a Catholic and a Protestant could identify each other by means of how they pronounced that letter.
It’s true.
A Catholic education gives rise to an haitch and a Protestant one to an aitch. If you know anyone from the Republic of Ireland ask them how they say it; chances are they’ll say haitch. If they say aitch, either they’re a scholar or a Protestant. All today’s adults from Ireland received an education from a religious school. Irish people might be secular when they grow up, but anyone who’s an adult now is more than likely to have gone to a religious school.

The word pronunciation that rattles me is “idear.” Is this form of “idea” ever heard in Rightpodia?

Happydog, have you never encountered Daisy Ashford’s immortal masterpiece, The Young Visiters? Go here and read it at once!

But, to answer your question in the present tense; I think every child in SE England instinctively adds an -r- between words that end and begin with a vowel ("the idear of") and unless consistently corrected (and it’s my impression that parents and teachers do a lot less correcting these days) they go on doing it all their lives.